Welcome to the second part of my recounting of the realm qualifier I took part in. Or “How Steve Gets Thrashed At Cards. Again.” Part 1 can be found here. Second game was against the son of a fellow regular playgroup goer. Nice lad, up until I saw he was playing a Murloc Hunter deck. Then afterwards I wanted to stand on his neck. It’s not that I’m a sore loser, it’s just that the deck is so spectacularly fucking retarded...

Nononononono!! Don’t run! I know WoW has something of a stigma attached to it for some people, but this is more about my experiences with a tournament qualifier and the game as a whole, not roleplaying as an Undead Priest named Valerion Shadowpoke or some shit. Give me your time and I’ll tell you a tale of woe and misery, my friend. Well, of being beaten at cards. A couple of weekends ago, I attended the Realm Qualifier...

I like Nightfall. It’s a deck builder like many others (piles in the middle, a currency to spend on said piles) but a combatitive one with some novel spins on the game type, like personal stashes of cards only you can buy from and has an interesting chain mechanic where you have to link cards together based on the coloured moons in the top left hand corner to make most effective use of them. I won’t go deep into the mechanic – I’ll...

AEG are “rebooting” Thunderstone with a new edition called, Thunderstone Advance: Towers of Ruin (that just slips off the tongue doesn’t it?!) This isn’t an expansion, but a whole new base set. Featuring completely redone card designs, new cards, a new game board for the village and dungeon and some improved rule booklets. The game now apparently incorporates a storyline, it remains to be seen how this works...

Since getting back into tabletop gaming last year I’ve been plagued by that one failing every wannabe magician hates: I can’t shuffle cards. I’ve no idea why, but as much as I want to ruffle shuffle, cut decks and throw cards around a table like a professional poker player I can’t. This is an issue with most games in my collection. The majority of them have some kind of card based mechanic, often doubling up...